Summary
Chained redirects negatively impact email deliverability and sender reputation in various ways. They can lead to increased latency, slowed page load times, and a degraded user experience, which can confuse search engines and trigger spam filters. Each hop in a redirect chain might have a different reputation, making affiliate marketing more complex. Multiple redirects make it harder for email providers and security filters to determine the final destination's safety and reputation, potentially leading to false positives or negatives. Link cloaking, often involving redirects, further obscures the destination and can raise red flags. Experts recommend minimizing redirects, keeping URLs clean, and monitoring the reputation of all domains involved in the redirect chain.
Key findings
- Reputation Risk: Redirect chains may involve domains with poor reputations, harming deliverability.
- Increased Latency: Chained redirects can slow down user experience due to increased latency.
- Indexing Problems: Long redirect chains can hinder search engine indexing.
- Security Filter Issues: Multiple redirects make it difficult for security filters to assess URL safety.
- Link Cloaking Concerns: Link cloaking obscures the true destination and raises suspicion.
Key considerations
- Minimize Redirects: Reduce the number of redirects to improve deliverability and user experience.
- Keep URLs Clean: Avoid excessive tracking parameters in URLs.
- Monitor Reputation: Regularly monitor the reputation of domains involved in redirect chains.
- Avoid Cloaking: Refrain from link cloaking techniques.
- Test Deliverability: Test email deliverability with various providers.
What email marketers say
9 marketer opinions
Chained redirects in email marketing can negatively impact deliverability and sender reputation. Excessive redirects increase latency, slow down user experience, and confuse email providers. They can also trigger spam filters, especially if redirect domains have poor reputations, are associated with cloaking, or use URL shorteners. Minimizing redirects and maintaining clean URLs is crucial for improving deliverability and user engagement.
Key opinions
- Reputation Risk: Chained redirects can involve domains with poor reputations, negatively affecting deliverability.
- Suspicion Trigger: Multiple redirects make it harder for email providers to determine the final destination, leading to suspicion.
- Latency Impact: Chained redirects increase latency, slowing down the user experience and potentially lowering engagement.
- SEO Affect: Excessive redirects can slow down page load times, indirectly impacting SEO and user experience.
- Cloaking Concerns: Cloaked affiliate links with multiple redirects can raise red flags with email providers.
Key considerations
- Minimize Redirects: Reduce the number of redirects in email links to improve deliverability and user experience.
- Clean URLs: Keep URLs clean and avoid excessive tracking parameters to prevent triggering spam filters.
- Reputation Monitoring: Monitor the reputation of all domains involved in redirect chains.
- Avoid Shorteners: Be cautious when using URL shorteners, as they can obscure the final destination and impact deliverability.
- User Experience: Ensure that the final destination of a link aligns with user expectations to maintain trust.
Marketer view
Email marketer from StackOverflow notes that chained redirects can increase latency and slow down the user experience when someone clicks a link in an email, which can lead to lower engagement and potentially damage sender reputation due to poor user signals.
16 Sep 2021 - StackOverflow
Marketer view
Email marketer from SenderLane explains that excessive redirects, especially when using URL shorteners, can make it difficult for mailbox providers to assess the true destination of a link, leading to deliverability issues if the shortener service is associated with spam or malicious activity.
23 Jun 2021 - SenderLane
What the experts say
5 expert opinions
Experts agree that chained redirects can negatively affect email deliverability and sender reputation due to various factors. Each hop in the chain may have a different reputation, complicating affiliate marketing efforts. The impact depends on whether email providers mechanically follow the links and how deeply they inspect each step. Link cloaking, often involving redirects, obscures the true destination, making it difficult for filters to assess safety. Overall, domains with poor reputation within the chain can negatively influence deliverability, as filters assess all involved domains, not just the final one. Enterprise filters tend to follow these links more thoroughly.
Key opinions
- Variable Reputation: Each redirect hop can have a distinct reputation, impacting deliverability.
- Provider Behavior: The effect depends on whether the email provider mechanically follows the links in the chain.
- Cloaking Concerns: Link cloaking techniques obscure the true destination and can harm sender reputation.
- Reputation Assessment: Email filters often assess the reputation of all domains in the redirect chain.
- Enterprise vs. Consumer: Enterprise filters tend to inspect redirect chains more thoroughly than consumer providers.
Key considerations
- Monitor Domains: Regularly monitor the reputation of all domains involved in redirect chains.
- Avoid Cloaking: Refrain from using link cloaking techniques that obscure the true destination of links.
- Minimize Hops: Reduce the number of redirects in a chain to minimize potential deliverability issues.
- Test Deliverability: Test email deliverability with different providers to understand how they handle redirect chains.
- Evaluate Affiliate Links: Carefully evaluate the redirect chains and reputations of domains used in affiliate marketing links.
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that using link cloaking techniques (often involving redirects) can negatively impact sender reputation because it obscures the true destination of the link, and recipients may be directed to unexpected or untrustworthy content. Also, it makes it difficult for filters to assess the safety of the content.
30 Mar 2022 - Word to the Wise
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks explains that Enterprise filters do it a lot, but it's expensive to do at scale so many consumer providers may not do it consistently, suggesting they might track the reputation of just the first link, sample redirection chains, or only dig deeper if there are other issues with the message.
11 Jan 2023 - Email Geeks
What the documentation says
4 technical articles
Technical documentation indicates that chained redirects can negatively impact email deliverability and sender reputation in several ways. Long redirect chains can hinder search engine indexing, potentially affecting sender reputation indirectly. Excessive redirects can cause performance issues and degrade user experience, leading to deliverability problems. Security filters like Microsoft's SmartScreen struggle to assess the final URL's reputation with multiple redirects, resulting in false positives. Link cloaking, often using redirects, hides the true destination, making it difficult for recipients and email providers to assess the safety of the link and resulting in deliverability issues.
Key findings
- Indexing Issues: Long redirect chains can hinder search engine indexing, indirectly affecting sender reputation.
- Performance Degradation: Excessive redirects can cause performance issues and degrade user experience.
- Security Filter Difficulty: Multiple redirects make it harder for security filters to assess URL reputation, leading to false positives.
- Cloaking Concerns: Link cloaking hides the true destination, making it difficult to assess link safety.
Key considerations
- Limit Redirect Length: Keep redirect chains short to ensure efficient indexing and user experience.
- Avoid Cloaking: Refrain from using link cloaking techniques.
- Ensure Performance: Optimize redirects to minimize performance impact and user experience degradation.
- Verify Final Destination: Ensure the final destination of the redirect is trustworthy and secure.
Technical article
Documentation from SparkPost explains that link cloaking (which often involves redirects) can hide the true destination of a link, making it difficult for recipients and email providers to assess its safety. This can lead to filtering and deliverability problems.
1 Apr 2025 - SparkPost
Technical article
Documentation from RFC Editor details the technical specifications of HTTP redirection, noting that user agents (including email clients) are expected to handle redirects, but excessive redirects can lead to performance issues and a degraded user experience, potentially impacting sender reputation if links in emails consistently cause such issues.
12 Oct 2024 - RFC Editor
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